


Unlikely is the word

by MathConcepts



Series: Unlikely things, and what comes after [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: ...because Booker is French, Angst, Booker and Copley are bisexual, Booker's casual alcoholism, Fluff and Angst, French kissing..., Friends to Lovers, M/M, Makeouts, Post-Movie, Rare Pairings, Swearing, Unlikely Pairing, because no one in the Old Guard is straight, fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25588180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: It becomes something of a normal thing, Copley showing up to complain about the rest of the team. Booker just never thought it would lead to this.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley
Series: Unlikely things, and what comes after [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856023
Comments: 11
Kudos: 213





	Unlikely is the word

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically just a really shitty outline for a much more detailed Booker/Copley fic I'm currently writing, but I'm putting this out here to get it out of my system, so I can concentrate better on writing the REAl fic.

He's ashamed to admit that he wasn't the most welcoming host when Copley showed up at his door that one night months back, but at least he let him in. He had assumed it was another job, another mission - _solo mission_ \- despite feeling so alone for most of his long life, it's going to take Booker years to actually get used to _being_ alone. Fuck, if it's not a fucked up situation he's gotten himself into.  
  
But it turns out that there was no mission, no job, Copley just " _wants some advice_." so he lets him in, pours him a finger of whiskey from his dwindling supply, and watches him sink it down almost gratefully.   
  
"Are they always like _that_?" Copley asks, twirling his glass idly in his fingers. There's no need to specify who the _they_ is or what the _that_ means, Booker and Copley are well aware of their mutual _interests_ and those interests' proclivities. Booker shrugs.   
  
"After so many years, you get used to it." Copley snorts, staring into the glass, and Booker takes mercy on him and pours him another. He doesn't have much advice for Copley on that day - or any other day - just talking about his team, his _family_ , is something he finds he can't do without wanting to vomit. Even though he knows he should try harder to help Copley, who is the one standing between them and the world now, and who certainly needs all the help he can get. And if Booker knows his team, the ex-agent hasn't taken on an easy job.   
  
"They should be more careful." Copley says after he finishes his second drink, bolstered in spirit by the alcohol, and now it's Booker's turn to snort. Careful is an almost meaningless word to the group of immortals, himself included. Look at him, attempting to pickle his liver in a dingy little apartment in Paris. _Careful_ is a moot word.  
  
"Andy should be more careful at least," Copley amends, and Booker sobers, albeit metaphorically, gritting his teeth against the nasty churning in his belly that has nothing to do with the hard liquor in it.   
  
"Yeah," he grunts, and polishes off the rest of the whiskey.  
  
  
  
  
Copley is back three weeks later, fuming like a cat that has had the mouse taken from him by...somebody. Booker is shit a metaphors. That's Nicky's area of expertise. But it's perfect timing, because Booker has just fought off the crushing self-loathing for long enough to go to the market, and while he is not the best cook - once again Nicky's area - he's passable. Neither of them eat much, which is probably for the best, but later, over a vintage bottle of red that Booker drags from the depths of the apartment's clutter, Copley informs him that he'd wishes he'd left well enough alone when he had the chance, and Booker nearly pisses himself laughing. They end up splitting the bottle fifty-fifty between two glasses each.  
  
He doesn't have any advice for Copley this time either, just a half-assed assurance that he'll get used to it in time.  
  
"Easy for you to say." Copley grins at him, and Booker laughs the dregs of his glass down his throat.  
  
  
  
  
The next time, Copley finds Booker in a pub he frequents, buys him a round, and spends the next hour grumbling. Booker sympathizes, he really does. He's lived with these people for _lifetimes_ , Copley has only known them for around shy of three months. It's only going to get much worse from here. Which he tells Copley with a somewhat evil glee, who looks to be seriously considering tossing Booker's last drink in his face. Booker snags it before he can though. No sense in wasting good liquor. Copley walks him home, because even with the way his body heals, it takes so many minutes to cycle through the torrid amount of alcohol he just consumed. He's sober by the time they arrive back, and that gives him an excuse to pull a bottle out of his home stash and offer Copley some, who strangely enough, didn't touch one drop at the pub.   
  
They sit out on the porch to avoid the screaming of the neighbors, the noisy fuckers, and sip the cheap beer. Watch the sun sink behind all the buildings. Get good and drunk and admit that he fucking _misses_ them, that he'd trade places with Copley in heartbeat. 

  
"Why'd you do it then?" Copley asks him, and Booker doesn't meet his gaze. Can't. Just turns the question back on the other man.  
  
"Why'd _you_ do it?" Copley doesn't answer. Just stares off into the distance, tracking the last slivers of sunlight as they fade. Booker keeps drinking.  
  
  
  
  
"My wife." Copley says the next time they meet. He'd come to give him some news on the team, not that Booker deserved it. But he appreciated it all the same. "Her illness...I thought I could stop it. Forever."  
  
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Booker tells him, and feels smug and wise for all of three seconds before he's throwing up in the kitchen sink. But it's just the vodka he'd been having for breakfast. Nasty stuff, it. He can't stomach it in any great quantity yet, even after all these years. (Andy can.)  
  
Copley tosses a dish-towel at him without missing a beat, and waits until he has a rinse. It's after, when Booker is tearing the place apart for the last bottle, in a limbo between numbness and rapidly approaching sobriety, that Copley's confession finally hits, and Booker pauses, his mind reeling, to tell him about his side of the story. His kid, his kid's cancer. His kid...  
  
Copley listens with the gravity of a man who _understands_ , and then silently hands over the bottle he must have found minutes before while Booker was at the sink.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Copley slides into the seat opposite him, what seems to be an iced tea in hand. Booker, well through two glasses and counting at this point, laughs. They're sitting at a restaurant at the waterfront for tradition's sake, Copley could just as easily have dropped the mission details off at Booker's apartment, but old habits are hard to break. Copley slouches in his seat and talks easier, louder, and it takes Booker an embarrassingly long time to remember that there is no hidden sniper poised on the opposite balcony, that Copley's head _isn't_ in the scope of a high-powered rifle. 

It makes Booker's drink sour in his mouth, and Copley notices enough of a change in his mood to to stop his small talk and give him a questioning look. "It's nothing." Booker growls, unsettled by the concern he sees in the other man's eyes. He doesn't deserve even that. Copley shrugs and slides Booker his iced tea, muttering something about it being to sweet for him, which Booker calls bullshit on. 

"It's an easy job, in, out, get him out, and go. You shouldn't have too much trouble." Booker sips the cold, sweet (it's perfectly sweetened) tea, washing down the bitter aftertaste of the alcohol, and nods. Doesn't say anything, doesn't ask why his job is to break this person out. The _why's_ and the _what's_ don't matter, what does matter is that Copley is trusting him with this job, that there is, miraculously, a person alive in this world that still trusts him.   
  
  


"Ever consider stopping?" Copley asks as he watches Booker down three fingers of whiskey from where he's fussing over a load of phony passports at Booker's kitchen table. It's solid oak, and perhaps the most stable thing in Booker's life at the present. 

"No." the Booker in question says, and pours himself another three. 

"Hm," is all Copley says, and then, "How does Steven sound?"   
  
"Sounds fine." Booker garbles out through a mouthful of liquor. It's a horrible fucking name as far as he's concerned, but he's stopped giving a single shit as to what's on his papers by now. 

"Steven Page, then." Copley says, stapling something together in the background. 

" _Page?_ " 

"Yeah, well, you know how your name is Booker and all," Copley says, and starts to laugh at Booker's expression. Booker can't even bring himself to be mad. It's funny and stupid, it's a type of camaraderie that Booker has been forgetting. He's possessed by a sudden urge to one-up the pun.  
  
"My name, my real name," he begins to a still chortling Copley, not sure why the fuck he's saying it (stop, you idiot), "Is _Sebastian Le Livre_ , Livre is French for _book_."   
  
"And thus _Booker_ ," Copley says and starts laughing even harder.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
There's a squat bottle of liquor in the uppermost corner of the kitchen cabinet, it's been there for days now. Which is truly a miracle, as this is Booker's residence, after all. It's scotch, dark in the amber bottle. _Expensive._ Booker has connections here in France, connections that can get him anything from weapons to exotic fish to obscure and discontinued novels. He'd used several to get that scotch, only because he was sick of drinking the cheap stuff he commonly bought at the markets. Or so he tells himself.   
  
It isn't broken out until Copley visits again, Copley, who coincidentally happens to have a great fondness for scotch. Who knew? Certainly not Booker. He only had a vague idea that Copley might like it when he requested it.  
  
"They're a handful," Copley murmurs over the scotch. Booker shakes his head, wordless. He knows. Fuck, he _knows_. They're sitting on the couch, the television's low, mindless drone filling the space between them.  
  
Andy was hurt this time. Badly, and despite it, the stubborn woman refused all attempts Copley made to supply her with a discreet doctor. He and Nile had worn her down eventually, Copley reports, but still. What if, what if, and _what if_?  
  
"I don't want her to go." Booker half-sobs. It's barely hitting him now, with this latest news from Copley, what Andy's new morality means. Beside him, only a half a foot-length away, Copley reaches for the decanter. Swirls it, watches the dark liquid at the bottom swish against the sides.

"No one wants the the people they love to leave them." he says darkly. More intense than Booker has ever heard him be. He would know. He has lost what Booker has, lost a wife, lost a _family_.   
  
"How do you handle it?" Booker rasps. Two centuries and he has not yet learned how to suffer tolerably. Copley grimaces, or maybe he smiles.  
  
"You drink." he says, and tips the rest into Booker's glass. Booker appreciates the sacrifice, he really does. Especially given the amount of admiration Copley had lavished over the precious scotch.  
  
  


  
It comes to head one night as they're sitting in front of the television again, some game playing that neither are paying any mind to. The atmosphere is decidedly less heavy, they have a pack of beers between them, and Copley is grousing over some petty incident with Nile.  
  
"Leave her, leave her," Booker urges, languid and warmed by the beer. "She's so young, so unfamiliar to this."  
  
"Would it kill her keep a low profile?" Copley snaps back, much to Booker's amusement. Copley never quite got over the mess they made in London, or the massive strings he had to pull for the clean-up, and he's taken to quite decorously policing the team's actions. Or at least trying to.   
  
  
Booker only laughs and pats him on the shoulder, twisting open another bottle to hand to him, which Copley takes and finally settles, falling back on the couch's threadbare cushions with a sigh. It's hilarious, really, the way the team has been running him ragged. He takes a drink, sighs again, and then shifts, leaning his entire body against Booker's, wedging himself in the space between the crook of Booker's arm and the cushion.  
  
  
Booker holds very, very still, paralyzed by surprise, his throat suddenly dry, waiting for Copley to _realize_ what he's doing and pull away at any moment. But he doesn't. A moment passes, and then another, and Booker finally dares to looks at him, lax against his side, his head drooping onto Booker's shoulder.  
  
 _How?...why?_ Booker doesn't understand it at all. It's too much, the level of comfort, of _trust_ it indicates. He clears his throat - a raspy, sticky sound because of just how dry it is - and Copley does pull away then with a start, his movements jerky and his eyes skittering to everywhere but Booker's face.  
  
"Sorry -" he begins, and and starts to scoot back, to _leave_ , and fuck, Booker doesn't want that.  
  
Booker doesn't know what comes over him next, except that he wants Copley to look at him, to _stay_ , ( _don't go, don't go_ , is running like a mantra in his head) and leaning forward and pressing his lips to the corner of Copley's mouth seems to be the best way to go about this.   
  
It's quick, awkward, almost a peck, and when he retreats from it, Copley is staring at him with wide eyes, his fingers raised to, but not quite touching the point of contact. Booker squeezes his eyes shut and runs a hand over his face, it's all too much, _what did he just do_ , and then oddly, starts to laugh. It's half from pure hysteria, half from actual amusement, and it's only when he gathers enough courage to drop his hand that he sees that Copley is softly laughing too.   
  
"You're a shitty kisser, old man." he says, and Booker grins at him, oh so relived and exhilarated. Copley sets aside his beer and scoots up on the couch, bringing them hip-to-hip, and Booker takes the incentive to grab the lapels of Copley's suit jacket and draw him in for another kiss, a proper one this time.  
  
It's slow and simple at first, a firm press of lips to lips, and then Copley's hand slides onto and up Booker's arm, curling around his bicep and holding him steady. He tilts his head, going for a deeper angle, and Booker lets him, and lets him him in, allowing the kiss to deepen.  
  
His hands fist tightly into the lapels, he doesn't plan on letting go anytime soon. This man trusts him, and now, it's clear he _wants_ him. Booker won't deny he wants him too. Even though there's so many, many things wrong with this Booker would be unable to count them, right now, nothing seems more _right_.  
  
 _Destiny_ , Nicky had said at that dinner that now seems ages ago, and it just might be at work here.  
  
  
  
  



End file.
